'Miracle on the Hudson' plane preps for final trip

Saturday, May 21, 2011

HARRISON - The trays of food that never got served have
been removed, along with some of the seat cushions and the
mold from dried river mud. Aside from that, the damaged
Airbus A320 jet is largely frozen in time from the day it
splashed down safely on the Hudson River in 2009 and gave a
country reeling from economic calamity something to cheer
about.

The US Airways jet has spent the last two years in a
hangar just outside Newark at J. Supor and Sons, a company
that specializes in large-scale salvage and moving projects.
Yesterday, crews continued preparations for the plane's
final journey, to an aviation museum in Charlotte, N.C.,
where it will be on permanent display.

The wings of the plane, which are detached, will be moved
first, followed by the fuselage in the next two weeks,
Carolinas Aviation Museum president Shawn Dorsch told The
Associated Press. He said it will take about five days to
drive the 120-foot fuselage from New Jersey to North
Carolina on a large flatbed truck.

The museum, in the city where US Airways Flight 1549 was
bound on Jan. 15, 2009, reached an agreement earlier this
year to acquire the plane.

"We're really over the moon about this,"
Dorsch said yesterday as he watched workmen climbing in and
out of the back of the plane cabin via a ladder.
"We're not the Smithsonian, so to be able to get
something like this is like getting the space shuttle."

Flight 1549 had just taken off from New York's
LaGuardia Airport when a flock of birds struck both engines,
shutting them down. The pilot, Capt. Chesley
"Sully" Sullenberger considered trying to land at
Teterboro Airport but quickly realized he wouldn't be
able to make it that far, at one point telling the control
tower, "We're gonna be in the Hudson."

As passengers and crew lined the wings of the
slowly-sinking plane, rescue boats rushed to the scene. The
plane was submerged up to its windows when they arrived and
managed to save all 155 people aboard.

The museum exhibit is scheduled to open next January and
will feature taped interviews with passengers and crew.
Dorsch said many passengers from the flight will be on hand
when the plane arrives in North Carolina.

Getting the plane there is requiring a good deal of
planning. Toll booths and low overpasses need to be avoided,
and Dorsch said the plane may have to avoid the New Jersey
Turnpike as a result. A proposed route will take the plane
west from the outskirts of Baltimore bypassing most of
Virginia, and then through West Virginia before reaching
North Carolina, he said.